D.C. School Bilingual Plan Pits Black, Hispanic Parents

When District of Columbia officials won a grant to launch an
intensive bilingual program at an elementary school, they expected
teachers and parents to hail the chance for all students to learn both
Spanish and English.

But the $675,000 federal grant has stirred tensions this fall at
H.D. Cooke Elementary School and its surrounding community. In some
cases, the controversy has pitted the neighborhood's African-American
residents against the immigrants from Central America who live among
them.

"This plan has created factions in the school that weren't there
before," said John Traina, a preschool teacher at Cooke who is active
in the teachers' union. "It used to be pretty peaceful."

A parents' meeting late last month to discuss the grant became so
heated that it had to be called off early, said Beverly P. Lofton, a
spokeswoman for Superintendent of Schools Franklin L. Smith.

The U.S. Education Department grant would, next fall, allow
educators to start a developmental, or two-way, bilingual program at
the school. In a two-way program, speakers of two languages are
educated in the same class and learn in both languages. The Education
Department currently provides funds for 61 such programs.

Disputes over federal aid for bilingual programs are rare, said
James J. Lyons, the executive director of the National Association for
Bilingual Education. Such controversies usually stem from a lack of
planning or community input, he added.

A big concern of parents and teachers at Cooke Elementary is that
some longtime teachers, many of them black, could be replaced because
they are not bilingual. They also fear the school will no longer serve
neighborhood children and instead will become a magnet school for
students across the city.

Some say they believe English-speaking students do not have as much
to gain under the plan, and many teachers believe they should have had
more say when the grant proposal was drafted, Mr. Traina said.

Elena Izquierdo, the director of the school district's office of
language-minority affairs, which drafted the proposal, said the federal
money will benefit all of Cooke's students.

She said there is no need to transfer or fire teachers and no plan
to establish a magnet school at Cooke. Ms. Izquierdo emphasized that
the specifics of how the grant will be implemented are still
negotiable.

Tensions Persist

But some parents remain unconvinced.

"This school has been multicultural since day one," said Nancy
Bryant, a black parent who lives half a block from Cooke Elementary.
"But they didn't want to put any money into it until it said
'bilingual.' That's just not right." Ms. Bryant, who has two children
at Cooke and who went to school there herself, has joined about 30
other parents who have requested a meeting with Superintendent
Smith.

But Rafael Lanuza, who lives across the street from the school, said
he thinks his 7-year-old daughter could benefit from the plan. He moved
to the United States from Nicaragua nine years ago.

"I think the opposition is coming a little bit from racism, because
most of it is coming from blacks," Mr. Lanuza charged in Spanish. "I
think sometimes they don't really want us [Hispanics] here."

Many teachers asked to comment about the plan declined. Some said
they had not yet made up their minds about it, while others said they
did not want to add to the controversy.

In the meantime, Cooke Elementary's principal, Marjorie L. Myers,
has asked teachers and parents to come up with suggestions for making
the plan more palatable.

A Mixed Population

Ms. Izquierdo said her office picked Cooke Elementary School for the
grant because the mix of students there naturally lends itself to a
two-way program. Cooke is about 60 percent Hispanic and 40 percent
black.

Of its 434 students, 269 have limited English proficiency; the vast
majority of them are native Spanish-speakers.

Some parents and teachers had voiced concern that Cooke would follow
the model of Washington's only existing two-way bilingual public
school, which draws students from across the city.

The original Cooke proposal called for students starting in
prekindergarten or kindergarten next fall to receive 80 percent of
their instruction in Spanish and the remainder in English. But school
officials said last week they will likely use a 50-50 model as a result
of the criticism.

The grant is for $225,000 a year for three years. Each year, the
program would spread to the next grade level.

"I think the end result is that this experience will pull us back
together, even though it's tense right now," Ms. Myers said.

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